Organizations Funded by the NED

Published: December 2019 ()

The following list shows the more than 1600 NGOs that between 2016 and 2019 have received grants from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The names of the NGOs have been extracted from the official and have been grouped by region.

The NED was in 1983 by U.S. Congress as a “private nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world.” With a of $160 million per year, the NED supports projects and NGOs in more than 90 countries.

Some of these NGOs may serve multiple purposes. As NED co-founder Allen Weinstein famously in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Such activities may include information operations, subversion, and regime change campaigns.

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General notes: The (sub-)regional grouping of NGOs has been done manually and hence is tentative. NGOs marked with an asterisk (*) have been drawn from official sources other than the NED grant database. NGOs marked with a bold (M) have attracted special media attention.

1. Introduction: About the NED

A collection of articles about the NED and its role in US foreign policy:

Some of the NED-funded organizations are also supported by other US institutions, such as the Open Society Foundation of George Soros (see ), the Omidyar Group of Pierre Omidyar (see ), or the United States Agency for International Development ().

2. NGOs in the United States and Western Europe

• Focus: NGOs in the US and Western Europe mostly have an international focus.


• Number of organizations: About 50 NGOs and some universities

A. The four main NED partner organizations

Acting as intermediaries, four US organizations receive about half of the annual NED funding: